Chapter 183: I’ll Make You a Condom [1]
Chapter 183: I’ll Make You a Condom [1]
“Sy... syphilis?”
As expected, Dolseok looked as though this was the first time in his life he had ever heard that diagnosis.
In truth, this was before the concept of venereal disease had even properly been established, so that was only natural.
Kang Hyeok himself had never particularly mentioned it in any of the many medical lectures he had given so far either.
Venereal disease...
Kang Hyeok clicked his tongue as he looked at Dolseok, who was staring back at him in shock.
Of all the things in the world to catch, the fool had gone and caught a venereal disease.
One, he could understand. But two?
No, it could be three or four.
Only then did Kang Hyeok remember a brief piece of knowledge he had learned in his student days.
He had thought he had forgotten it completely because he had never had occasion to use it, but apparently it had still been stored somewhere in his head.
Venereal diseases, especially when contracted in brothels, must never be thought of in the singular.
That was how the infectious disease professor used to lecture them as casually as if he were eating rice cake.
His tone had sounded seriously concerned, but from the listener’s side it had just seemed absurd.
First- and second-year medical students were barely twenty-two or twenty-three years old, no more than children.
Of course, there had been a few older students among them who were well above the average age.
Well, I guess what offended me back then has turned into practical training now.
Dolseok was practically a perfect teaching aid.
Of all things, because the third-generation cephalosporin did not suit him well and kept giving him diarrhea, his syphilis had ended up manifesting too.
“Yes, syphilis. You can tell from the name alone it feels ominous, can’t you?”
“Yes. Just hearing the word poison in it already makes me feel bad...”
“You bastard. It really is that terrifying a disease...”
Why else would it have been given the name syphilis?
Its power had been especially terrifying in Europe.
At one point, it was even said that one-third of Paris’s population had been infected with syphilis.
There were also countless famous historical figures anyone would recognize by name who had suffered from this disease.
“Take it as an honor. At least now you’ve got one thing that lets you stand shoulder to shoulder with great men of the past.”
“Huh?”
“Napoleon, Tolstoy, Beethoven, and so on. Bastard, they’re people I feel bad even comparing to you.”
“What kind of bull—”
Dolseok stopped there and shut his mouth.
Then he braced himself for the blow he expected to come crashing into the back of his head.
But that did not happen.
Kang Hyeok was too deep in thought about syphilis treatment.
Quite a few treatments had been developed over time.
There was even a claim that more than half of mercury poisoning in Europe had been caused by syphilis treatment.
In fact, mercury treatment really had shown some effect against syphilis.
Though compared to that effect, it also brought on the enormous complication of heavy metal poisoning.
They even deliberately infected people with malaria.
The syphilis bacterium was extremely weak against heat.
One doctor had become fixated on that fact and deliberately infected patients with malaria, forcing them to suffer through blazing fevers.
At the end of that terrible suffering, the syphilis was gone, but there were many sad stories in medical history books of patients who ultimately died from malaria.
In the end, what reduced syphilis from one of history’s great scourges to just another venereal disease was the arrival of antibiotics.
“Hey, take this diligently. Two in the morning, two in the evening.”
Kang Hyeok took third-generation oral cephalosporin antibiotics out of his house-call bag and handed them to Dolseok.
Dolseok accepted the medicine, but his face grew a little sullen.
Now that the diagnosis was clear, he had expected some kind of novel treatment.
Yet in the end, what he got was the same medicine he had been taking before.
“D-do I just have to take this?”
“Just this? Ha, you little—”
Kang Hyeok glared at Dolseok with an incredulous expression.
The bastard had no idea how precious antibiotics were and was still putting on this kind of act.
Smack.
Already angry, Kang Hyeok whacked him on the back of the head first.
Dolseok instantly lowered his head and grumbled in protest.
“Ugh... why are you hitting me?”
“Why? Do you have any idea where you could get this anywhere else?”
Sadly, there was nowhere in all of Joseon where he could.
No, not just Joseon—right now it would have been difficult anywhere in the world.
And if one asked whether Kang Hyeok could make even something vaguely similar to this antibiotic himself, the answer was no.
Of course, he knew how Fleming had discovered penicillin and how it had later been developed into medicine.
Every doctor learned that much.
The problem was the details.
I’d need to know exactly what kind of blue mold they were talking about.
How many foods went moldy and turned bluish-green?
If he scraped that stuff off and fed it to people at random, he would not be a doctor—he would be a first-rate murderer.
Besides, there was a line that always appeared in writings about Fleming.
Purified only the effective portion.
But if he did not even know which part was effective, how was he supposed to purify it?
So in this era, the only meaningful antibiotics were the pills Kang Hyeok was handing over now.
“Quit whining and take it.”
“Ah, but when I take this, I get diarrhea...”
“Diarrhea’s better. What, once all your hair falls out, do you want to walk around wearing a wig?”
One of the reasons wigs had developed in medieval Europe really was syphilis.
Nobles whose dignity had been ruined by the terrible hair loss it caused had apparently worn them desperately.
He had thought that was nonsense when he studied it, but seeing Dolseok’s hair loss now, it seemed true.
It really was falling out in horrifying clumps.
“I said take it!”
“Ah...”
While the two of them were bickering, Makbong, Yeoni, and Yeoju returned.
“It’s been a long time since I had this much fun today, Miss.”
“That’s true. Makbong can’t run around like that anymore, can he?”
“What are you saying? If I started running right now, I’d still beat those lot—”
Standing on tiptoe with his tall frame, Kang Hyeok saw that Hwang Yungil, Kim Seongil, and the others were also turning into another alley.
They’re treating the diplomatic mission lavishly, both on the way there and on the way back.
Why else would a sandaenori troupe suddenly show up here?
It was all thanks to some sharp-witted local magistrate who had summoned them in advance so the group could rest a day before moving on.
The diplomatic party was already exhausted from the long journey, so there was no reason for them to refuse.
Thanks to that, Dolseok’s diagnosis had also been completed safely, so it had benefited everyone.
Well, except for Dolseok himself, who was still resisting.
Smack.
Kang Hyeok’s temper rose again, and he kicked Dolseok in the back.
It was only natural to get angry when he was telling him the medicine would make him better and the fool still refused to take it. At least, that was how he was rationalizing the violence.
Kang Hyeok had always had a good build to begin with, and he had never neglected his morning training.
The force of his kick was no joke at all.
Dolseok ended up rolling over and over while clutching his back.
After rolling for quite a while, he finally came to a stop at Makbong’s feet.
“This bastard’s getting beaten again today.”
“Y-you’re back.”
“But... somehow you look a little...”
Makbong tilted his head as he looked at Dolseok curled up at his feet.
Who knew how long it had been since he had looked properly at his face like this.
Ever since they had stepped onto Joseon soil, everyone had only been checking his lower half.
“W-what, damn it.”
Dolseok hurriedly covered his head as if some great shame had been exposed.
Yet he had no problem showing his lower half.
Makbong shook his head and prodded Dolseok in the side with his foot.
After traveling together so long, he knew by instinct exactly which places were sensitive.
As expected, Dolseok immediately burst into shrieking laughter and covered his side.
Thanks to that, the whole group was able to see Dolseok’s head clearly.
“Hm?”
“Mm.”
Makbong and Yeoni could tell something was strange, but they could not pinpoint exactly what it was.
Yeoju, however, was different.
“Why is he missing so much hair?”
With the sharp eye of a painter, Yeoju immediately identified what was wrong.
Only then did Makbong and Yeoni nod.
“Ah, the hair.”
“It’s almost all gone.”
“Did you curse your ancestors or something? Why’s it suddenly like this?”
Makbong stood there blankly, teasing Dolseok.
The contrast between them was so striking that it pleased Kang Hyeok greatly.
Laughing heartily, Kang Hyeok slowly walked over to the two of them.
“See that, Dolseok?”
“Huh?”
“Makbong took his medicine properly, exactly the way I told him, so nothing happened to him. But you... ended up like this.”
There was no way gonorrhea and syphilis had somehow spared only Makbong.
If anything, he had probably been exposed to even more bacteria.
According to Dolseok’s testimony, Makbong did three rounds a day as a matter of course.
“So... this really happened just because of this medicine?”
Dolseok looked down at his palm with a face full of disbelief.
Two small pills sat quietly in it.
“Yes. I’m a surgeon, so all you lot ever see me do is cut and stitch things up, but really, medicine is what’s truly amazing.”
“I-is that so?”
Naturally, it would be hard for him to understand.
That was only to be expected.
Were university hospital patients not the same?
That’s just how people think.
By now it had all been banned as illegal, but back when Kang Hyeok had only just become a professor, patients still sometimes gave doctors gifts.
Before surgery, doctors usually refused, but after the operation went well, most would go “Hmm” and accept it.
Kang Hyeok had been one of them, and the amount he received was quite large and varied.
One day, while he was drinking a bottle of whiskey he had received that very day, one of his colleagues from internal medicine had spoken enviously.
“Ah, when will I ever get things like that?”
It was strange.
The man was as fine a doctor as Kang Hyeok, and he sent even more people home alive than Kang Hyeok did.
“People think internal medicine just writes prescriptions... I mean, that’s true, but that’s exactly what makes it difficult, isn’t it? You know that, right?”
What could Kang Hyeok possibly say to that?
All he could do was nod.
In fact, whenever Kang Hyeok did not know what medicine to use or how much, he asked that very friend.
But to patients and ordinary people, a doctor swinging a knife naturally looked like the one truly doing something.
The Dolseok in front of him seemed to be no different.
“Quit whining and take it. If you want to live. That can kill you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You’re already in secondary syphilis. If it reaches stage four, you die. You’ll die smearing shit on the walls, I’m serious.”
“Ugh...”
“I’m not joking, so take it.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
After that, Kang Hyeok went on at length about stage-four syphilis.
You get dementia, you shit blood, you age early, and so on.
All of it was horrifying to Dolseok, who had only just entered his twenties.
“I’ll take it. I’ll take it.”
In the end, Dolseok chose diarrhea and swallowed the medicine.
As Kang Hyeok had said, life felt too unfair to die yet.
Dolseok’s sensitivity to the third-generation cephalosporin turned out to be quite real, and throughout the period he took the medicine, he had to keep running back and forth to the privy.
The only difference from before was that what had once come out the front was now coming out the back, but the suffering Dolseok felt was beyond description.
About ten days into those days of constantly soiling himself from behind, Dolseok came to find Kang Hyeok.
“Y-Young Master.”
Dolseok looked almost emaciated.
Even his dry lips were cracked and streaked with blood.
Kang Hyeok found it impossible to ignore the way he called out, so he straightened up.
“What is it, bastard? If you’re about to say you don’t want to take the medicine, get ready to die before you open your mouth.”
“N-no, it’s not that...”
“Then what is it?”
“Now that I’ve been through this, this damned venereal disease really is the worst disease under heaven.”
“That’s true enough.”
To think that something done for pleasure could bring about such agony.
Was that not the very definition of giving medicine and disease together?
“We have to get rid of it, Young Master.”
“How am I supposed to get rid of it? Live without doing what you do, like me.”
“Ah, that’s a bit...”
“Then what?”
“Isn’t there some way to fool around freely and still not catch anything?”
“Hey, if there were something like that, I’d be the first to... No, wait a minute...”